


Soviet Lesbian Song

by LisKin



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Discovering feminism through sex?, F/F, Femslash, Masturbation, Period-Typical Sexism, Self-Discovery, Sex Toys, Soviet trivia, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 15:01:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20065948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LisKin/pseuds/LisKin
Summary: Ulana and Marina go back a long way: science and sex. It the end, that's what made Ulana Khomyuk the person that demands meeting the highest possible authority in Chernobyl.





	Soviet Lesbian Song

**Author's Note:**

> The name comes from the 'Soviet Lesbian Song' by Yuz Aleshkovsky, a Soviet poet and writer who was famous for his Party-non-compliant texts that were forbidden in the Union.
> 
> I tried to very accurate with all the details, both cultural and mundane, and to give a more or less accurate portrayal of what the life (including sex life, yep) of a female married scientist could be like and how did a lot of women like Ulana Khomyuk build their careers. 
> 
> Also, I was intrigued by the quick interaction between Ulana and Marina in the series: the familiarity of it, as if they've turned each other inside out quite a few times over the course of quite a few years. So, I had my fun exploring what their past history could be like. 
> 
> There are some notes at the end of the chapter for those of you who might not be too familiar with some common bits and pieces of the Soviet culture. Somehow re-creating the actual atmosphere the characters lived in turned out to be one of the most challenging and fun bits for me so I'm trying to share it with the world:)

“Kurchatov Institute, Laboratory four”, the familiar voice says.  
  
Ulana pauses for a moment. It is not an uncomfortable pause that is the obligatory attribute of former lovers sharing a long-time-no-see moment. Right now Ulana is far from a soggy sentiment of _'what has been'_ and _'what has become of us'_. She is all focus and determination, very much like a greyhound gracefully crinkling its long noble nose at the faint smell of chase in the air.  
  
“Marina Gruzinskaya? It's Ulana Khomyuk from Minsk”.  
  
Everything beyond their names and locations is a string of euphemisms. That kind of talk slips on like a thick winter coat, the kind that gets passed down from an older cousin or an aunt and requires surprisingly little home-made tailoring to adjust to the curves of a new body.  
  
A Soviet citizen learns to speak in code at mother's breast: empty shelves in grocery stores are nothing but _'temporary difficulties'_ and thinking that those shelves, perhaps, should not be empty for weeks is _'a vestige of capitalism'._  
  
A Soviet girl gets an additional education in the language of womanhood, learning that being a female communist builder involves civil duty of providing the state with children. Children come from some shady actions _'down there' _(but not when _'the Red Army comes to the city'_) and that are driven by _'gamic needs'._  
  
A Soviet lesbian is a euphemisms in itself, a _'gender identity disorder'_, a matter of Burlaw courts(*) for immorality and forced aminazin treatment in psychiatric wards.  
  
Indeed, the two of them have mastered talking in code over the ten years of their – would _'acquaintanceship'_ be a good one to use, another code word that has to be slightly accentuated to make sure the meaning gets through: wink-wink, do you get my drift?  
  
Has it been ten years already? Oh, but it has.  
  
Ulana despises Marina Gruzinskaya the very moment she and her husband, a plumpish shorty with femininely rounded hips, cross the threshold of the Khomyuks' apartment. There's an assortment of things to despise: the wide-legged crimplene trousers and a flowery shirt under a fashionable sweater-vest, hefty costume jewellery to complement the look, Marina's clearly barber-styled haircut, and, most of all, her equally bored and patronizing gaze that is a signature trait of career men's spouses.  
  
Ulana's, too, is a career man's spouse – a different kind, though. The kind that isn't really keen on getting married in her graduation year but does so nevertheless (her, a promising young scientist; him, an ambitious engineer who knows all too well how to turn a girl like Ulana on – take her to a guest lecture on space flights and keep whispering in her ear about the grand things the two of them could do, too: _“...and don't you know the state favours young families over unmarried citizens?”_). The kind who asks to hold the child-birth off until her thesis defence but turns out to be pregnant soon after passing her qualification exams for the Candidate degree(*) (_“Oh, but it's for our common good, Ulanochka, the accommodation waiting list(*) is much shorter, a__lso,__ you know how they never let childless citizens go on work trips abroad”_). The kind that cannot finish her own thesis for nearly eight years now because there are nappies to wash, and the day-care waiting list to take care of, and the long, long lines to wait in, hoping to score some deficient commodities like sausage, oranges and toilet paper.  
  
Then, there are Nikolai's guests (_'Our guests, Ulanochka, don't I do it for the family?)'_: sharper, more accomplished versions of himself, the _useful connections_ that can give him a career boost to the much desired position of MAZ(*) Deputy Chief Designer – who else should take the office but the trustworthy comrade Khomyuk, the embodiment of a diligent worker, a devoted citizen and a model family man? Ulana knows: if she plays along well, she'll have time - after the guests leave and the dishes are done - to finish the library book due tomorrow and to work on her thesis notes before sleep takes her.  
  
Deep down, below the thick coating of the non-negotiable gender paradigm, there's stale consolidated hatred. The feeling has dried up over the years, just like a soup stain on the apron she is still wearing when she hears Nikolai open the front door and greet someone in a cheerful voice:  
  
“Come in, come in! Ulanochka! Come over here! This is Comrade Gruzinsky, a dear guest straight from Togliatti”.  
  
“Well, not really a guest, eh, Nikolai?” Comrade Gruzinsky smiles.  
  
“No, not a guest, of course. Sergey Alexandrovich is the new Deputy of Technical Engineering. He'll be personally supervising the new 5335 line. This is Marina Yurievna, his wife, she is affiliated with the Belarusian Institute for Nuclear Energy now. And this is my better half, the keeper of domestic peace, my one and only Ulana”.  
  
He wraps his arm around Ulana's shoulders as she exchanges handshakes with the couple.  
  
“And what does Ulana do, when she is not busy being the better half?” Marina (_'Just Marina, please'_) asks, boredom in her gaze giving way to a flicker of amusement.  
  
“She is...”  
  
“I am a nuclear physicist”, Ulana interrupts and jerks her shoulder a little, an almost noteless protest motion. “I'm teaching at BSU(*) until my thesis defence”.  
  
“A colleague, then!”  
  
Amusement sprouts as Marina gives Ulana and her stained apron a top down look.  
  
“I was a chemistry major myself, though. What's your thesis on?”  
  
Before Ulana can answer, her husband claps his hands and then rubs them together in a gesture of anticipation:  
  
“Shall we let comrades women chat, Sergey Alexandrovich? This way, if you please”.  
  
He gestures his guest towards the living room and tries not to look confused as he notices Comrade Gruzinsky darting a quick glance at Marina.  
  
“Go”, she says and waves her hand dismissively. “I'll help my colleague with her kitchen duty. We'll become friends in no time”.  
  
_'I doubt that'_, Ulana thinks.  
  
_'I hate her'_, Ulana thinks.  
  
_ 'Screw you'_, Ulana thinks.  
  
“Tea first, perhaps, or dinner straight away?” Ulana asks.  
  
It's dinner straight away.  
  
Marina, that dressed-up doll, is quite capable of bossing around, she finds out. First, her husband. Now, Ulana's kitchen. She does not ask where the knives and cutting boards are, neither does she ask for permission or instructions. Instead, she inspects the cabinets herself, gets the needed cutlery out and starts slicing salami – a deficit treat that was kept for the New Year's Eve but now has to be sacrificed for Nikolai's career.  
  
“So, Better Half Ulana. Has the Institute made advances to you yet, promising lands of milk and honey? There's a shortage of actual physicists, I've heard”.  
  
They did make advances a few years ago but they were very explicit about wanting her with a Candidate degree. She could have been up for a good start. Good starts tend to be rather impatient, though, and rather intolerant of ambitious husbands and growing children. Ulana hopes that it doesn't show on her face. Apparently, it does. Marina stops slicing and gives her a look of teasing curiosity.  
  
“You don't really strike me as a family type”.  
  
_'You don't really strike me as a scientist'_, Ulana thinks but doesn't say out loud.  
  
Instead, she just shrugs. A Chekhovian pause follows. Marina keeps watching her, and, had Ulana been watching her back, she would have noticed her gaze warming up, amusement replaced by something that resembles solidarity.  
  
“The high-velocity neutrons research screams for educated specialists”, Marina says. “There is a whole lot of us coming from allied sciences but, you know... we are not you”.  
  
_'We'll become friends in no time'_, Ulana remembers and greets the attempt with a wry smile.  
  
“Are you trying to win my favour with science talk?”  
  
“Oh, no. There a whole bottle of Khvanchkara brought along specifically with that aim in view”.  
  
“Don't you know how to woo a girl”.  
  
This time Ulana's smile is genuine.  
  
“You'd be surprised”, Marina says with a wink.  
  
Khvanchkara, the strong red wine, does the trick. The wine is deceitfully light. At first, both of them sip on it while being part of the common table talk. The four of them discuss the usual things: what's to be found on the shelves of Minsk grocery stores and the market prices (three times higher but the choice is worth the rouble), regional salary bonuses, Yugoslavian wall units(*) and the upcoming football game with Argentina. When the conversation leans towards the topical news of Soviet automotive industry, Marina reaches the for the bottle and waves it in the air.  
  
“Shoo now! You are getting boring. Go for a smoke or something, and take the MAZ business with you”.  
  
The men are drunk enough, vodka turning them into a pair of amiable and rather pliant husbands. They retreat to the corridor first to get their jackets, and then drift towards the balcony.  
  
“It's all peace and quiet without them, eh?”  
  
Marina offers a refill, and Ulana gulps down the remains in her glass.  
  
“It is”.  
  
“Don't you have a kid? Where is he?”  
  
“With the in-laws”.  
  
“Miss him?”  
  
Wine is a miraculous key to things that should probably remain locked away. A glass too late, though, Ulana's alcohol-driven straightforwardness will not be easily contained now.  
  
“I'm not crazy about another batch of Nikolai's guests slobbing over him and going for an obligatory round of _'Whom do you like more, your mommy or your daddy' _and _'What do you want to do when you grow up'_”.  
  
“Don't we all know what they are going to do when they grow up? Smoking behind the neighbour's garage first. Next, sneaking booze inside their backpacks, and going to a friend's dacha for their first drinking party, and vomiting all over the vegetable beds. Then, they would bring girls along, and it would be pretty bad for the poor things because our boys are taught the basis of Marxism-Leninism but not a thing about how to treat a girl”.  
  
Surprisingly enough, Ulana does not feel wounded at the prospects that Marina is sketching for her son (she's probably right, too). Instead, she wonders how much of that is personal. Is she talking about herself and a high-school sweetheart? Was it the man she is now married to? The thought easily transforms into a tipsy entertainment for the mind: she can't help imagining the sharp, confident Marina and her plump husband in bed together. Is she usually spread on the sheets and pinned down with his round belly, like a butterfly from a collection set? Does the good fifteen centimetres of height difference bother them when they do it? Ulana's cheeks blossom with crimson and her lips curl into a guilty smile that she tries to wash off with another hasty gulp.  
  
“What's funny?”  
  
“It's nothing”.  
  
“Oh, come on, it must be something. What's going on in that beautiful smart head of yours?”  
  
“I'm not nearly drunk enough to answer that”.  
  
Marina perks up and reaches for the wine bottle with noticeable enthusiasm only to find out that it is already empty. An ostentatious look of frustration spreads across her face. She turns the bottle upside down, pouts when nothing comes out and goes for a rather theatrical 'what-can-you-do' shrug. Next, she makes a _'Eureka!' _gesture, pointing her index finger up, then towards the vodka bottle and giving a proud nod as if she has just been awarded a Lenin Prize(*) in science. The show is primitive, yet, it makes Ulana giggle. In return, Marina raises her eyebrows, the look changes from frustration to offended dignity. She sternly wags her finger at Ulana, causing even more giggling, and then pours some vodka in their empty wine glasses.  
  
“Bottoms up”, Marina says and actually presses the base of the stem as Ulana takes a sip to make sure that it's not just a sip – the whole shot must go down.  
  
Everything is still funny to Ulana and she bursts into laughter while the glass is still pressed to her lips, spitting some of the vodka out. Marina chimes in, and in no time both of them are roaring with laughter, tears on their eyes, gulping hungrily for the air and banging their fists on the table. By the time the men return, both of them are already calming down but the perplexed look on Nikolai's face sends Ulana into another fit, hiccuping and smudging tears with the back of her hand.  
  
They retreat to the bathroom and elbow each other while splashing cold water on their faces, still giggling. Marina reaches out and tucks a loose wet strand of hair behind Ulana's ear.  
  
“That look on his face, though!” she says. “Doesn't he like his better half happy?”  
  
“He likes a hot dinner after a long day of climbing up the social ladder”.  
  
“Oh. And what is it you like?”  
  
Was it not for the wine and all the laughter, Ulana would probably feel a sting of bitterness. She doesn't, though. She contemplates the questions with the kind of enlightenment that is not uncommon to experience when one is rather drunk and looks at the whole of surrounding god's creation with naïve wondering, as if seeing it all for the first time. She lets herself sink onto the edge of the bathtub and looks up at Marina, who bends down to gently cup Ulana's chin with her hand.  
  
“Do you like him?”  
  
There's a honest answer to that and a right one. If only she could remember the latter.  
  
“He's a good father”, she says. “And a good specialist”.  
  
Marina rolls her eyes.  
  
“I hope you're getting compensated for being married to a good father and a good specialist”.  
  
She words are innocent but something in Marina's voice make them sound suggestive. Indecent.  
  
Ulana feels her cheeks burning again. Compensated, huh? As if the thing can actually be compensating. She remembers overhearing a talk in a women's health clinic, a woman in her late thirties asking the doctor if there is something her husband could do so that she would feel something, too. _'Something is probably wrong with you physiology'_, the doctor said.  
  
“Do _you_?” she asks in return, mimicking the very same suggestive tone, and Marina snickers, her grip tightening on Ulana's chin.  
  
Really, does she?  
  
There's somebody at the bathroom door, knocking and asking if comrades women are alright.  
  
“Out in a sec!” Marina shouts and takes her hand away but not before giving that chin a gentle squeeze.  
  
When goodbyes are said and the guests leave, when the leftovers are put away into the fridge and the dishes are done, she takes her clothes off in front of the bedroom mirror but does put her nightgown on. Instead, she shoots a quick glance behind her back at the bulky form of her husband's body under the blanket and then returns to watching her own reflection: the already visible cobwebs of wrinkles in the corner of her eyes, her breasts, a size bigger and sagging more than she would like them to (a souvenir from months of breastfeeding), her soft round belly and a bolster of baby weight still around her waist.  
  
She turns sideways, sucks her belly in and then lets it back out with a long exhale. She nestles her breasts in her palms and lifts them up. Then, her palms begin to slowly travel down and back up, stroking the softness of her flanks.  
  
_'What is it you like?'_  
  
She would definitely like working on her thesis – that's a process that actually lasts and is much more enjoyable. Not to mention, satisfaction is a real prospect when it comes to her scientific work.  
  
Her hands move in circles now as they massage her hips and buttocks.  
  
A position the Institute. Further research. In time – her own lab. A doctorate.  
  
Her hand slips to the pubic bone and, after a beat of hesitation, she lets her fingers slowly slide further, pressing them into the delicate flesh. She tip-toes to let the weight of her body enhance the pressure. It's not like she's knowledgeable at what she's doing – she has tried it a few times before but to no noticeable result, and concluded that it's not worth the effort. Maybe it _is_ physiology, she thought. Right now, though, her actions are driven by intoxicated intuition and her body proves to be surprisingly responsive. She can feel a swell growing under her fingers and feels adventurous to explore it, letting her middle finger slip a bit further into wetness and start rubbing.  
  
_Oh_. Oh, so that's it?  
  
Her husband tosses in his sleep, and the sound makes her freeze. All the heat that has been building up down there cools off right away. Ulana slowly raises her hand to her face and looks at it with the same drunken curiosity as she felt before, in the bathroom. The feeling nudges her to catch the tip of her finger between her lips and teeth and give it a long exploring lick with her tongue.  
  
'He can make his own breakfast', she thinks. She will have time to finish that library book tomorrow before she goes to teach her morning classes.

**Author's Note:**

> Burlaw courts - also known as 'comrade courts', a form of collective justice in the USSR. The courts were formed within differenent social and educational institutions (chances are, your workplace had a court of its own), and the members were chosen by an open voting (chances are, you'd be judged by you own colleagues or classmates). 'Immoral behavior' (which could be anything, from public kissing, to adultery, to being gay) was a matter of Burlow code justice.
> 
> Candidate degree is a Soviet and later Russian research degree that is roughly equivalent to the PhD. To obtain the degree, one would pass the qualification exams to aspirantura (the Candidate research program), and write and defend a thesis. It takes four years now but back in the Soviet days it could take much longer, depending on the subject and a number of circumstances (also, depending of whether the committee would find anything 'anti-Soviet' about your research). 
> 
> Accomodation waiting list is a part of the so called 'accomodation issue'. There was a shortage of accomodations, ever so growing, but the state could actually favor you with your own apartment, should you be a valuable citizen. Being married, having a kid and doing some important work gave you hope to be granted an apartment withing an approximately 5 to 15 years range. Your name would be put on the list and then you would just wait and hope. Quite a lot of couples got married and had kids for the sake of having their own place in the future. 
> 
> MAZ - Mink Automobile Plant. 5335 was a new series of trucks. 
> 
> BSU - Belarusian State University. 
> 
> A Yugoslavian wall unit was the ultimate symbol of one's prosperity and one of the biggest fetishes of a Soviet household. (Also, notoriously difficult to buy). 
> 
> Lenin Prize was one of the most prestigious Soviet awards.


End file.
